Wall Street’s 2011 results were disappointing and the howls of banker anguish over shrunken bonuses have reverberated through the better Manhattan restaurants, bars and clubs. The rise in financial services’ share of the economy, seemingly so inexorable, has at least paused. Is this merely a blip, or is it the beginning of a reversal, in […]

In an interview with Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times, a senior German official described the euro as a “machine from hell that we cannot turn off.” Personally I am more positive than most about the euro, provided it is managed by grown-ups and not by Keynesians. However there is no question that our current […]

Probably the biggest single lesson of the last few years outside monetary policy has been that the contract between top management and shareholders is broken. Top management rewards itself with ever more grandiose bonuses and option payments, while shareholders are fobbed off, not with dividends which have value, but with “share repurchases” which do not. […]

The causes of the 2007-08 downturn are now etched indelibly into popular memory: it all came about because of an infamous housing bubble, which policymakers inexplicably failed to spot. Readers of this column will know that I regard this explanation as simplistic, although housing was certainly an intermediate cause of the problem. However spotting the […]